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What should I look for when hiring a blogger?

In the past I’ve made many mistakes when hiring content writers/bloggers, the end result is that my targeted traffic is no better off even after investing several thousand dollars in to it.

I have a blog with 400+ posts, each being over 500 words of unique content yet my traffic is under 30 a day. I use wordtracker for my keyword research so I don’t think that is the problem.

Instead of hiring cheap writers from eastern European countries I want to hire people that know what they are writing about, someone that is an expert in the niche, someone like Rand Fishkin and Dr.pete for SEOmoz, always enjoy reading their posts and that is what I want on my own blog.

I always refer new writers to this post >> http://www.seomoz.org/blog/perfecting-keyword-targeting-on-page-optimization and have recently had someone complete 40 articles for $200, but this isn’t what I want. I want people to come to my blog, enjoy it, and be satisfied with what they have read. I don’t want people to read the junk I have produced by someone that has no idea what they are writing about.

The Panda updates have affected me in a negative way so it’s now time to change.

I have attempted to hire “good bloggers” before. $25 an article sound reasonable? I now felt like I was getting scammed which was maybe due to lack of direction as the articles I was getting were not satisfactory.

Is it better to have a writer physically come and work in my office? Or is it ok just to pay someone by the article at the comfort of their own home?

8 Responses

I want to hire people that know what they are writing about, someone that is an expert in the niche, someone like Rand Fishkin and Dr.pete for SEOmoz,

I have attempted to hire “good bloggers” before. $25 an article sound reasonable?

These two things are way way out of whack! You want to hire Rand and DrPete and your budget seems to be $25/post???

*speechless*

Here's what works for me...

The content that I produce is being used in one of two ways... 1) informative "how-to-do-it" articles for a retail site in a very tiny niche, or, 2) informative "first thing that a person interested in a topic should read" articles for educational sites.

I usually try to make my content the best on the web in its niche. This takes time. I typically spend between one day and one week on a single page of content and usually have an employee helping me with photos, charts, data, video and research. RICH content is needed to compete.

These articles are very expensive to produce. They are unique, substantive, heavily illustrated and I hope that people say "wow" when they click into them.

Before I start producing content I go out to the SERPs where it will compete and decide if I can blow the existing content out of the water. If the answer is "yes" then I begin.. if the answer is "no" I usually look for a different topic. Best-on-the-web content gets linked, tweeted, liked and emailed. Pedestrian content doesn't get that kind of attention so it is not going to attract traffic and its not going to rise in the SERPs. You are not going to get your investment back.

Most of the content that I produce does not rank well the first week or the first month... when I check on it a year later I am often surprised to find it on the first page of google sometimes attracting hundreds of visitors per day - or more - but sometimes they are in very low traffic niches where 10 visitors per day is a lot. Some of the visitors are from head terms but the majority are from long tail queries that interact with one of the two thousand words that appear on the page or one of the six images that illustrate the articles. To make these articles pay they have to be about something that attracts great ads or something that we sell that pulls in some good profit.

I don't focus on word count, I ignore PA, DA, etc... I decide if I can beat their content by a substantial margin and if the answer is "yes" then i go for it. Over half of the content that I produce does not make a profit but some that I produce does really well. I am learning.

Surely you have built up your readers, twitter account and email list over time and are at a stage where people are just ready and waiting to reference your posts.

Not really... but I have a lot of pages out there.

The key to getting payback is selecting topics that are related to commercial products. For example, if you produce content that tells how to solder stained glass then visitors who visit your page might be inspired to purchase glass, solder, tools and more. The income from an article like that can be a few dollars per day.. so you can get pay back quickly when your content is successful. And if it is successful you drill into that niche with lots of related articles that allow you to expand your presence in a profitable niche. '

It's like looking for gold... you can find a little gold in a lot of places... but you don't open a mine until you have found a rich vein - then you mine like crazy.

As usual you make some good points; I think the divide is between handling one or two sites and handling 100. With clients, unfortunately, most have budgets based on their business size and economic ability. Due to that they cannot spend at a level that will provide for the highest quality content. (Written by subject matter experts). Along with that, most are so busy running their own businesses/practices that they do not have the time write their own.

So, we do it for a fee, and we have to meet a budget and we still have to do quality content. Our checkoff is the client. They are the ones who have to tell us that we have gotten their subject correct; we insure the SEO is spot on.

To tell even a large profitable law firm that content for a medical law site is going to be $500 to $1000 per page is a non starter. But when you get the rare one that understands content is King - and have egos to match - and that is when it is really fun.

when you get the rare one that understands content is King - and have egos to match - and that is when it is really fun.

That would be great... if the leadership at such a firm decreed that every staff member would write a substantive document about the single most hot button topic in his/her field of expertise... that could pull in a lot of traffic and a lot of social sharing.... or they could hire new graduates and give them the job.

They would get bragging rights content that would showcase the expertise of their firm. Isn't that what they are selling? They should be strutting their stuff without askin'.

There are several ways to find content writers or copy writers. First and foremost, I would suggest you understand that when hiring for something like copy writing, if you are going to get someone who is accomplished, you are going to pay a high rate. (There may be an exception, but I believe it would be rare.) There are several SEO blogs that mention hiring writers and as soon as i find one of the more recent I will post to this question.

We hire our copy writers from colleges and universities. We place ads through the Student Career Services, etc. and wait for the responses. We get a lot of responses because we tell them what we are looking for and there is no pie in the sky. We ask that they email a resume and a sample of something they have written lately in a format we prefer. The beauty of this is that many who are lazy won't respond and those who do respond provide you with a first test by submitting their writing.

If the writing is poor in grammar, spelling (poor spelling in the age of spell check is a no hire), or structure, we just send a thanks for responding email. If the sample is good, we then send them a task of two paragraphs on something within the context of what we work on. We are very clear that we are not expecting them to be subject matter experts and we provide enough detail where they will understand it is a simple page we are wanting. If they pass that, we invite them in for an interview. This provides us with what I call Likely Hires.

Now, the work begins. Ours, not theres. We do not expect them to understand SEO, CMS's, etc. We have them come in for a day of training and then each week for two to four hours in the office. We teach them what they need to know to be good copy writers. We also set a schedule that they agree to and only require that they write at least one page a week. We continually offer guidance and encouragement. An example of a training subject would be like this post from Cyrus Shepard on copywriting for link building: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-super-easy-seo-copywriting-tips-for-link-building. They actually love this kind of thing.

We pay $12 per hour in Houston to start. Once they are competent, we then pay them by the project with a full page of content on an average site (200 to 400 words) paid at between $25 and $50 based on how much research they will need to do. (A medical site might need more research than a site on recycled oil or about a given company). We have writers who want to work more and those whose classes or situation changes who scale back. We never complain as we told them that we understood they were in school and it would change. At the same time, we tell them if they learn as they go, there could be a position on graduation. We use a system where they send in there page or an email saying it was posted in a CMS, and tell us how much time they spent on it. This lets us know if they are pushing the hours up or not working efficiently. We can then intervene.

We provide financial incentive if they seek out a subject that will help the company and pass it (we pay for classes like, web dev subjects, Adobe Creative Suite subjects, Excel, etc.). They have to complete the class and then provide a one page on what they learned and how they can help as the result of it.

The key is in understanding you must teach them. Not how to write, how to write for disparate subjects and for different clients. You cannot expect to hire someone who is skilled in blogging, smart enough to write a great blog, etc. to accept $25 for an article. (My opinion). But, you can teach someone and pay them fairly and let them see they are learning and are part of a cool team.

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